


canary of the sea

by icouldbuildacastle



Series: the roadtrip [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, all the essentials!!, aquarium fluff!!! beluga headcanons!!!! obligatory tommy merlyn angst!!!, road trip of love and happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 17:20:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5013301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icouldbuildacastle/pseuds/icouldbuildacastle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity and Oliver go to an aquarium, and the truth about Oliver's favorite animal comes out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	canary of the sea

**Author's Note:**

> hey look it's me coming at you with road-trip fic even though episode 2 already aired!!! um my excuse is that i started writing this before the premier (which was a+) and.. didn't manage to finish it until now... anyways enjoy this fluff

Mystic Aquarium had an amazing penguin exhibit, and Felicity was determined to get to it. She forced Oliver to watch the mini documentary playing about the conversationist rescue efforts for African blackfoot penguins affected by the oil spill, then dragged him by the hand over to the penguins, finding an empty spot along the railing to watch them dive and waddle and flip about. She cooed down at their adorable little faces.

 “You know,” Oliver started, drawing lazy circles on Felicity’s back with one hand and holding his (boring vanilla) ice cream cone with the other, “Beluga whales are my favorite animal.”

Felicity snorted into her own ice cream (swirl with rainbow sprinkles, because she wasn’t boring) and tilted her head back. “Yeah, right.”

Oliver grinned down at her. “No, really. They have been since I was a little kid.”

“Okay, what?” Felicity gaped. “I would have pegged you as like, a wolf person. Maybe a falcon or something, I don’t know. A grizzly bear, perhaps?”

Oliver chuckled and bumped his chin against her head. “Are you trying to make a comment about my personality?”

“Yes,” Felicity smirked up at him, and Oliver elbowed her in the side. “Well, my favorite animals are pandas, but I don’t sit around and eat all day despite the temptation, so I guess my personality doesn’t really match up either.”

Oliver hummed in acquiescence and rubbed his cheek against her head. They stood and watched the penguin’s shenanigans for a few more minutes, before Felicity consulted the map she had picked up despite Oliver’s protests. 

“Let’s go.”

* * *

 

“Felicity, what-“ Oliver started, but Felicity ignored him and walked straight up to the ticketing booth. “What are you-”

“Hi, can I have one ticket for the next beluga whale ecounter?” Felicity smiled brightly at the bored teenage cashier.

“Yeah, that’s at 2:30,” the girl sighed out in response. “Just the one?” 

“Felicity-”

Felicity tightened her grip in response. “Just the one.”

“Your total is two-hundred and fifty dollars.”

* * *

 

“Felicity!” Oliver hissed.

“What?” she blinked innocently up, giving him her best puppy dog face.

“You know what- damn it! Stop making that face!” he growled. She couldn’t help the way her lips quirked. “Buying only one ticket? For me to meet a beluga whale? _Really_?”

“This is the type of enriching life experience you need more of, Oliver,” Felicity explained airly. “Besides, I don’t do wetsuits. Now hurry up, you have a date with a beluga and you don’t want to be late!”

Oliver sighed heavily, but followed Felicity to the door marked for live animal experiences and followed the trainer inside, shooting her one last long-suffering glance over his shoulder.

 

* * *

 

Oliver in a wetsuit was a sight to behold, Felicity had decided, but didn’t quite make his top five looks. His ass looked great, but his skin went all goose-bumpy and his hair had gone all flat from the water. Of course, he was standing in arctic-temperature water waiting to meet a beluga whale and fulfill a childhood dream, so maybe Felicity shouldn’t be ranking him on a sliding scale of hotness.

He had had all the safety procedures explained to him, nodding seriously throughout, and had gotten to enter the shallow part of the exhibit. Felicity was leaning against the glass fence along with other patrons who wanted to observe the belugas (and her boyfriend). The whales were swimming happily about, diving down deep, circling and looping one another, and occasionally coming up to spout out a stream of water, making children shriek delightedly. The trainer whistled, and one whale broke off from the rest and zipped over to where he stood with Oliver.

Felicity marveled at how large the animal actually was. _Three tons_ , she had read, and eighteen feet long. It was amazing that humans dared to enter the water with such creatures, that they thought they could control them.

But the whale seemed curious and playful, poking it’s head out of the water and releasing a high-pitched twitter. Oliver grinned at the sound, and if he wasn’t Oliver he probably would have giggled. She watched, entranced, as Oliver ran his hands down the smooth musculature of the whale, murmuring softly the whole time. He touched his hands to the beluga’s fins, laughing when the whale decided to splash him. Then, he allowed the trainer to position him so that he could hug the whale. The way Oliver laid down his arms, with so much care and gentleness and precision, made Felicity’s breath catch in her throat. That he was cautious with this animal that could crush him in an instant.  

But when he did wrap his arms around the beluga’s body, and the whale nuzzled back into him, the smile on his face could have lit up Starling. 

 

* * *

 

“So, why belugas?” Felicity queried, looping her arm through Oliver’s. He was still a bit damp and chilly, so different from the furnace he usually was. Oliver’s head tipped and his eyebrows furrowed as he looked down at her. “Why are they your favorite animal?” Felicity clarified, resisting the temptation to _bop_ him on the nose.

“Oh,” Oliver rolled the sound over his tongue, considering. “Well, when I was in second grade, Tommy and I got assigned this project together. Research an animal and make a poster for the class, you know, basic elementary school stuff, I guess. We pulled beluga whales out of the hat, and neither of us had any clue what they were. So Rebecca, Tommy’s mom, took us to the aquarium on a Saturday to go see them.”

Felicity could practically see miniature Oliver and Tommy running around the old Starling City aquarium, tapping the glass, wreaking havoc and smearing ice cream all over their clothes before turning to Mrs. Merlyn with matching not-so-innocent grins. “She must have been a saint.”

“She was,” Oliver said softly, expression becoming drawn. Felicity squeezed his arm, and he shook his head slightly, as if to break himself out of bad memories. “That was one of the last times I saw her. She helped Tommy and I glue all our stuff to the poster and told us it looked great. And belugas have just been my favorite animal ever since."

Felicity rested her head against Oliver’s shoulder, letting him bask in the fading happy memories and in her. 

(And she just managed to resist the temptation to buy him a stuffed beluga in the gift shop. But- to Oliver’s chagrin- she _did_ buy the key chain.)  


(And when the pictures came in the mail, Felicity immediately scanned them in to send to Thea, who called later to laugh in Oliver’s ear for five minutes straight.)

(And she framed her favorite. And put it on the mantle.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> this was heavily inspired by some people i follow on twitter who aggressively headcanonned oliver's favorite animal as a beluga whale (it was @olversqueen and @baetinelli i think). also my favorite animal is a penguin and i got to do a meeting experience with one and it was kinda the highlight of my life so why not bestow some of that happiness on oliver?
> 
> also belugas are called "canaries of the sea" and that lil parallel was too good for me to pass up so it became the #title
> 
> follow me on twitter @beenswifted and tumblr @swiftcitybitch for lots of incoherent screaming!!


End file.
